


Christening

by Sandoz (Sandoz_Iscariot17)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Mentors, Vehicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandoz_Iscariot17/pseuds/Sandoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No owl can possibly be called Archie." -T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christening

**Author's Note:**

> Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and DC Comics.

It was one of those bright, happy coincidences which Dan never called “fate” or “inspiration” when on that particular morning his _The Sword in the Stone_ hardcover slipped free of its bookshelf and hit his head like a brick.

He thumbed the old pages, noting the smudges left from ink-stained schoolboy fingers and remembering the scenes so clearly without even rereading a passage. ( _“You might as well call me Wol, or Olly…No owl can possibly be called Archie.”_ ) How many times had he read this when he was in school? And he hadn’t thought about in years, not even after seeing the Disney film at the Utopia. He brushed his palm over the worn blue dustcover, the image of Excalibur buried in the black anvil. The book had been a present from his father—a first printing—one of the last olive branches Joshua Dreiberg extended before he quietly gave up attempting to understand his son.

Hollis’s present was a cheap bottle of champagne from a 43rd Street liquor store, no less sacred for being the second thing Hollis ( _Hollis, Hollis_ , he repeated in his mind, _not Mr. Mason._ It still didn’t sound right) had ever given him, after the Nite Owl name. And this, after all, was a celebration.

Staring up at the enormous blue tarpaulin in the Owl’s Nest, Dan inhaled deeply. (He wondered if he would ever get used to calling it the Owl’s Nest, or get over that feeling he was still a kid playing in a tree fort.) His chest was expanding, swelling with pride. He’d shown Hollis the blueprints, the skeletal frame, but not the finished, _real_ , thing. He felt like laughing. Why did he feel like he was presenting Hollis with his grandchild?

He looked at Hollis, flashed a grin, and pulled the tarp away with strong arms, revealing the airship that he’d built in his basement over two years and with only his two hands. Dan pressed a button on the remote hooked on his belt loop, and the engine thrummed to life, yellow light filling the cabin and making the wide, round windows bright like eyes.

“Here it is,” Dan said with a twitch of a smile. “The, ah, Owlship.”

Hollis’s mouth was open, his eyebrows reaching for his hairline. “Well…doesn’t that beat all.” He put his hands on his hips. “That is something else, Danny.”

(Dan’s father had never been a cold man, but he had never called him Danny.)

As Dan wiped his sweaty palms on grease-smeared blue jeans, Hollis stepped forward and brushed his hand over the Owlship’s surface, feeling it hum with energy.

“To think,” he said in a low, awed voice, “A Nite Owl who can actually fly…”

Dan’s throat was sealed. Sometimes you can’t say anything.

Hollis faced him, an impish smile on his face. “What’s his name?”

Dan thought to say that airships were usually female, but he swallowed it. No champagne flutes in sight, they’d poured the champagne into a pair of owl-shaped beer steins. Dan handed one to Hollis, made a _bottoms-up_ gesture.

“Archimedes,” he answered, then clarified at the sight of Hollis’s arched eyebrows, “Archie.”


End file.
